NATPE Smaller, But No Less Vital To TV

The just-ended decade was not good to NATPE, the annual TV programming conference. In 2000, the show attracted more than 17,000 people and nearly 1,000 exhibitors in New Orleans. This year's edition, which begins a three-day run at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas on Jan. 25, will come nowhere near those totals.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell, NATPE President Rick Feldman acknowledges that the show is in a "trough" caused by the downsizing of the traditional syndication market and the failure of some of the new digital media to launch as expected.

Yet, he says, NATPE remains the No. 1 venue for creators, sellers and buyers of TV programs and when the economy and media -- old and new -- rebound so will the conference.

Feldman also explains the decision to shift the show to Miami in 2011 and expresses irritation over NAB's habit of scheduling conflicts with NATPE.

An edited transcript:

NATPE has been constantly evolving over the years. What would you say is the mission of the organization and its conference today?

They are specifically designed to facilitate, in many different ways, the intertribal conversations that need to happen among creators and producers -- the people behind the shows -- and networks and advertisers and agents and various distribution streams.

There really isn't another place where all of those people can come together to talk about the actual buying and selling and about the partnerships that need to be created to get more things produced. We continue to believe that NATPE is the major significant United States market for the buying and selling of both content and ideas.

That sounds like a wonderful mission. So why isn't this show exploding? Why isn't it growing rather than shrinking?

Because the legacy business, the domestic syndication business, isn't growing. Consolidation, poor local economies, contracts that have gone on for 25 or 30 years, the lack of independent stations have kind of constipated the business and the time periods. And many people that were involved in that world have either retired, gone away, died or done a host of other things.

In '06 and '07 and '08, a number of digital studios were getting funding and starting up -- companies like 60Frames, Ripe TV and Worldwide Biggies. A new platform for original content seemed to be developing, but then the recession hit and many of them went out of business or were unable to get significant funding.

So, while on the one hand there was a dissipation of the analog people, the digital people have yet to find a way to make money. It's caused a trough, which is where we have been at NATPE in the last couple of years. Hopefully, when the business does pick up, when advertising picks up, when programming for television stations picks up, when stations and other producers create original product for mobile, then there'll be growth again at NATPE.

It's not going to be what it was in 1999 or even probably in 2007 any time soon, but the business as a whole has contracted and it needs time to come back. We're not there yet.

Let's talk about the legacy business. What's the outlook for the syndication business and its place at the show?

That's a better question for Kenny Warner [of Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution] and Barry Wallach [of NBCU Television Distribution], those kinds of guys. They're living this every single day. But, obviously, right now, we're in a situation where stations don't want to support the creation of content that needs their cash, and you're not going to have a vibrant first-run business without cash. That's going to remain a problem for at least the near term, certainly as long as the car business and the financial business are suffering. Both are significant engines to local television stations.

Some people have said it's good Oprah ultimately will being going away because it will create a paucity for a certain time period. But that all depends on what the ABC stations decide to do. If they decide to either do local programming or news, that takes them off the board as the launch group you need for a new first-run show. You also have to expect that if the ABC stations wanted a new first-run show, they would first want to look to Janice Marinelli [of Disney-ABC Domestic Television], their own company, to produce the show.

And as long as MyNetworkTV and the CW exists, you're not going to see any kind of new development for independent stations because there aren't any independent stations and there are no time periods in primetime.

So I have to say for the short run, it looks like there will be nice things happening once in a while, but, a flood of new first-run high profile products? It doesn't seem like that's going to happen anytime in the foreseeable future.